ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



of view this was no new idea. Rome itself had not been hostile to 

 their occasional suppression in favour of some better scheme, as witness 

 the bulls so recently obtained by Wolsey to find funds for the establish- 

 ment of his colleges. Moreover no county in England, for its area, had 

 had a wider and therefore better recollected experience of suppression 

 in the previous century than Hampshire. But when parliament agreed 

 to the suppression of the alien monasteries in 1415, their revenues were 

 assigned to other religious establishments. The twelve cases of suppres- 

 sion of that year in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight benefited such 

 institutions as Winchester College or the hospitals of St. Cross and God's 

 House, Southampton, as will be set out hereafter. In 1486, Bishop 

 Waynflete was allowed to transfer the possessions of the Hampshire 

 priory of Selborne to Magdalen College, Oxford. Again, in 1494, Pope 

 Alexander granted a bull, at the request of Henry VII., for the suppres- 

 sion of Mottisfont Priory and the annexation of its revenue to his founda- 

 tion at Windsor, Mottisfont having then only three canons, a number 

 insufficient for the fulfilment of its religious obligations. There was 

 now however a totally different spirit abroad ; the king and his courtiers 

 took advantage of a certain genuine yearning for reform that was exer- 

 cising the minds of some of the more devout and thoughtful, to enrich 

 themselves. However diverse may be the opinions of men qualified 

 to judge as to monasticism having played its part out, or as to the extent 

 of its decadence, no man can approve of the way in which the dissolution 

 of the religious houses was accomplished, and of the manner in which 

 their revenues were used. 



To give colour to the policy of confiscation, Thomas Cromwell, as 

 the king's agent, appointed a commission of visitors to the monasteries. 

 The first result was the suppression of the lesser houses whose revenues 

 did not exceed 200 a year, which were pronounced to be the more 

 corrupt. The preamble to the act of 1536 stated that ' in the greater 

 monasteries, thanks be to God, religion is right well observed and kept 

 up.' Some of the condemned houses managed by bribes to stave off the 

 evil day. The most celebrated Hampshire convent condemned under 

 this act was the Winchester abbey of St. Mary, of early royal founda- 

 tion founded by Alfred, extinguished by Henry VIII. The abbess, 

 Elizabeth Shelley, by paying a fine of 3 3 3 6j. 8</., and by resigning to 

 Sir Edward Seymour, the king's brother-in-law, the manors of Urchfont 

 and Allcanning, secured a reprieve, and a new charter was granted in 

 1 536. The reports of the mixed commissioners of local gentry as to the 

 lesser monasteries, of which there are but few full returns, certainly did 

 not justify the suppression of these houses 1 ; and the reports are the more 

 remarkable, as the visitors were all servants of the Crown in different 

 capacities. 2 



1 Details will be subsequently cited in the account of each religious house. 



. * Sir James Worsley was governor of the Isle of Wight and captain of Carisbrook Castle, whilst 

 the two Paulets (brothers of Sir William Paulet, treasurer of the household) and Berners were Irish 

 commissioners and officials of the Augmentation Office. 



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